Cushioning materials such as seat cushions, crash pads and other decorative interior automotive parts as well as chairs are made by vacuum forming a vinyl or ABS sheet material over a form (buck form) to form a shaped skin having the contour and shape of the desired part. This skin is plced in a mold and filled with foam to yield the finished skin covered foam article. This method of manufacture does not effect high definition in the surface of the skin viz a sewed effect but quite the contrary will tend to destroy any raise or surface definitions in the vinyl or ABS sheet.
Therefore, high definition skin items have to be formed by slush molding or rotary casting type molding which requires the mold to be heated and cooled as well as to be rotated or rocked with, in many cases, loading an excess change to the mold and then dumping the excess charge polymer. Not only is such a molding process expensive in energy consumed in rocking, heating and cooling the mold but it causes premature mold failure due to cracking the metal molds. This premature mold failure contributes a significant amount to the cost of forming each skin. Further, these methods use very expensive electro-plated molds.